LC 
191 

• B48 



M66 



ooomqqg 
HKflH 

CXCJCXS 



r-JflPim 



■SBmHh 



www 

QOOwHO 



■BHQ 

PWWw 



n w v s nf Y ' . Tnrr 3JKETECK 

knSnnran SI 





u « 

<■ o 










9 f 9r 






REY. DR. BETHUNE'S ORATION 



THE PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY. 



\* 



V V 



A \\ s. ^ 



-. \ % 



THE CLAIMS OF OUR COUNTRY ON ITS LITERARY MEN. 



AN 



ORATION 



THE PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY 



HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 



JULY 19, 1849. 



BY 



GEORGE W.'BETHUNE. 




6*> 






CAMBEIDGE: 

PUBLISHED BY JOHN BARTLETT. 

1849. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1849, by 

John Bartlett, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



CAMBRIDGE: 
METCALP AND COMPANY, 

PRINTERS TO THB UNIVERSITY. 



OE ATI ON. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen of 

The Phi Beta Kappa Society: 

The next difficulty, after gaining courage to ad- 
dress so distinguished an assembly, is the choice 
of a subject. The orator's habits may, through 
your characteristic courtesy, influence his decision; 
and, as you have laid the honorable appointment 
upon one who has been consecrated an advocate 
of Christian morals, you will not be displeased, if 
his theme should accord with his calling. His 
task will, then, be more proportionate to his pow- 
ers; for the discovery of truth is seldom a privi- 
lege of man, and the illustration of well-known 
principles in a manner that gives them attractive 
-freshness is an art of rare genius ; but to urge 
simply, yet earnestly, the motives of duty, is not 
above the pitch of an ordinary strength. You 
have, also, gone beyond your own ranks, (every 
man of which were more worthy of the office,) and 
commanded the present service from a stranger of 
a distant city, nurtured at the bosom of another 



Alma Mater, who, without a drop of New Eng- 
land blood in his veins, has little knowledge of 
your sectional topics, sympathies, or predilections; 
therefore, while deeply grateful for the compliment, 
he unhesitatingly assumes the full right, which 
your request implies, of speaking as it becomes 
him before a society of American scholars, fear- 
less of giving offence by a frank utterance of his 
thoughts, certain of a kindly hearing from those 
whom talent, cultivated under the best auspices, 
has made liberal, candid, and considerate. 

The Claims of our Country upon its Liter- 
ary Men have been often discussed; but the field 
is so rich, that it may well reward an hour's 
gleaning, though many strong reapers have gone 
before. 

Patriotism has been regarded by some as a vision- 
ary virtue, existing only in boyish dreams, romantic 
rhapsodies, and declamations of demagogues ; by 
others it has been denounced as a narrow vice, 
the opposite of Christian philanthropy. The first 
are at variance with the general sense of mankind; 
the last, with the moral economy ordained by 
God. That there are those who, while professing 
love for their country, would sacrifice its welfare 
to their selfishness, proves no more than their 
infirmity or hypocrisy. Human weakness is no 
argument against the reality of a virtue; on the 
contrary, a false pretence of a moral principle tes- 
tifies to its value, for cunning bad men cloak their 
evil with the semblance of good. It were mere 



commonplace of quotation to cite instances show- 
ing the power of patriotic sentiment. Every page 
of history, and of none more than our own, re- 
cords its courage in conflict, or its devotion under 
defeat. Poetry, the language which genius gives 
to the heart, exults with its pride, or saddens with 
its sorrow. The orator appeals to it, seldom in 
vain, as among the strongest passions of our na- 
ture. The ethical philosopher defines its limits 
and adjusts its rules. The Holy Scriptures sancti- 
fy it by their infallible authority, when they pre- 
serve " for our learning " the mournful elegies of 
captive Judah, mingling her tears with the waters 
of Babylon ; or bid us " Weep not for the dead* 
neither bemoan him, but weep sore for him who 
goeth away, for he shall return no more, nor see 
his native country"; or, above all, exhibit the 
sympathy of Christ himself, the Divine perfection 
of humanity, who, on his way to die for the 
world, paused to lament over Jerusalem, and, as 
he sent forth the " glad tidings which shall be for 
all people," commanded that they should be pro- 
claimed first throughout the land of his birth. 
Nay, amidst the shades of this venerable Academy, 
where so many mighty spirits have gathered wis- 
dom that they might go out to give their grateful 
fellow-citizens oracles of far-reaching, conservative, 
animating counsel, and so many, worthy of their 
ancestry, are at this time refreshing their zeal by 
the contemplation of such high examples ; with 
the sacred fields round about us on which the 
proto-martyrs of our country poured forth their 



blood like water, and in close sight of Bunker's 
Hill, — who, under the glory of "so great a cloud of 
witnesses," dares question the reality of a virtue so 
magnanimous in trial and so grand in successes'? 
One, who has been a companion and fellow of 
miscalled politicians, holding the base creed, that 
offices made for our country's advantage are the 
legitimate pay of successful, because unscrupulous, 
conspirators, until he has " quite lost the divine 
quality of his first being," may sneer at patriotism 
as a profligate does at conscience, or a wanton at 
modesty; an atrabilious misanthrope, eager after 
proofs of human pravity, may have no leisure for 
observing the beautiful workings of God within 
man " both to will and to do of His good pleas- 
ure " ; a mystical abstractionist, inverting his reason 
from the actualities of common life, may forget the 
common feelings of common men; but a little 
child, whose heart leaps at the word home, and 
knows why the cannon roars on the twenty-second 
of February or the fourth of July, can lead us to 
a purer, more generous, more uplifting, more philo- 
sophical sentiment. 

Love to all men is, indeed, the law of Chris- 
tianity. God, " who hath made of one blood all the 
nations of the earth, for to dwell together on the 
face of the whole earth," never meant that the 
brotherhood should be broken by territorial boun- 
daries, or limited by expedients of trade. Yet 
none, but those who have gone mad upon remote 
generalisms and unities, will deny that kindred, 
vicinage, and organized reciprocity impose peculiar 



obligations. The maxim, that " charity begins at 
home," though much abused, is true. While God 
is the great object of all obedience, each man is 
made the centre of his human relations. His re- 
gard for himself is the inspired rule and measure 
of the regard due from him to his fellows. Next 
to himself is his household, then the immediate 
community in which he lives, then his country, 
then the world. Genuine benevolence is systemat- 
ically expansive. It is educated in the family for 
the state, in the state for mankind. A disobedient 
child will not make a good citizen, nor one un- 
faithful to his countrymen a philanthropist. These 
affections are concentric circles, described by the 
hand of the All- Wise around the heart; nor is it 
possible for our love to reach the outer, but by 
overflowing the inner. Hence the mistake of the 
illogical communist is apparent, when, to realize 
the idea, truthful in itself, of a universal family, 
he would destroy the germ from which the grand 
sociality must spring, and, with it, the house- 
hold dependencies that teach a mutual well-being, 
the household needs that urge a combination of 
effort. We sympathize with him in his aim, but 
we deny the wisdom of his process. 

For the very reason that these affections are 
concentric, they never clash. The Divine law, 
which assumes it to be right that a man should 
love himself, because he is, under God, the guar- 
dian of his own welfare, enjoins upon him love for 
his neighbour ; and, as the same authority requires 
his care for those to whom he is more immediately 



8 

related in his own house, so should he care for his 
country, which is an enlargement of his home, and 
for the world, which is the common home of his 
heavenly Father's human family. But, as self-love 
becomes sinful selfishness when it prompts a man to 
war against, or even neglect, his neighbour's good, 
so does love of country become a vice when it seeks 
national aggrandizement by injury done the people 
of other lands. The same rule that measures duty 
between man and man is equally applicable to na- 
tions. As an individual is dependent upon his fel- 
lows, as a community is prosperous through a dis- 
tribution of labor and a reciprocity of benefits, so 
must international exchanges be for the good of 
each and of all ; and, since it is a law of retributive 
providence, political science should adopt as an 
axiom, " The liberal deviseth liberal things, and by 
liberal things shall he stand." 

The nearly synonymous use, in these remarks, 
of the terms duty and affection has arisen from no 
confusedness of thought, but from the difficulty, 
or rather impropriety, of treating them apart from 
each other. What life is to the animal frame, love 
is to morals. The anatomist may dissect a dead 
body, and demonstrate the functions of each part 
in the wonderful mechanism ; but the mysterious 
motive-power, which gave impulse to all, is gone. 
So the moralist who leaves love out of view, how- 
ever accurately he may define our relations and 
deduce rules of conduct, presents us with a cold, 
inanimate abstraction. Such is not the system of 
the Bible. There, all duty is comprehended by 



love. Love is the vital principle of obedience to 
God and of service to man. Reason, unduly lauded 
as the superior quality of our nature, is, even when 
embracing by faith " the wisdom from above," valu- 
able only as it advances the development of love 
towards its heavenly perfection in the likeness of 
God. Hence, by the Divine arrangement, there is 
for every duty an inspiring affection. The love of 
parents for their child precedes proof of parental 
obligation ; the love of a child for its parents is the 
stem on which filial duty must be grafted. Om- 
niscient grace exhibits the forgiveness of God, 
" that he may be feared " ; and constrains us from 
sin to the love of Christ, by " shedding his love 
abroad in our hearts " ; because, " if we love him, 
we shall keep his commandments." Thus love of 
country is first called forth by the power of asso- 
ciation over our natural sensibilities. As a babe 
learns to love the face which smiles kindly on 
him, the voice which gently soothes him, the bosom 
which yields him sustenance, the clasping arm which 
embraces him, so do we love the scenes about our 
early home, the haunts of familiar and friendly 
intercourse, the fields which give us bread. They 
may be rugged and unattractive to a stranger's 
eye, but the heart radiates over them its own 
beauty. His icy plains are as dear to the hyper- 
borean as the Alpine valley to the Swiss, or 
the vine-clad hills, laughing shore, and purple sea 
to the Italian. Then, as reason expands, the love 
expands. We learn to love the people whose wel- 
fare is united with our own, and the soil held 
2 



10 



in common with them; to cherish the government 
whose laws afford us protection ; or, if it be tyran- 
nical, to struggle for a better, and to die rather 
than suffer foreign domination. Yet, though ra- 
tional self-interest should enhance the affection, it 
is not, of itself, a sufficient principle of duty; for, 
if we consider only the profit which our country 
brings us, we shall serve it only so far as the ser- 
vice is profitable. Love is the strength of patriot- 
ism ; for love alone is capable of that unhesitating, 
self-sacrificing devotion which seeks reward in our 
country's honor, holding fortune, ease, and life, 
as our country's fathers held them, cheap for its 
sake. Nor can we doubt that a sentiment so nat- 
ural, so generous, so energetic, divinely indicates a 
corresponding obligation ; or that unfaithfulness to 
our country is unfaithfulness to God. 

This brief reasoning may seem unnecessary, and 
it would be, were it not for a disposition, too often 
shown by some claiming superior refinement, to 
treat patriotism as, at best, a weakness of the vul- 
gar, forgetting that many of what are called weak- 
nesses belong to the best parts of humanity. Like 
the early, fragrant blossoms of the vine, they prom- 
ise fruits of active usefulness ; or, like its slight, 
graceful tendrils, they twine our pliant infirmity 
around the upright strength of ascertained rule. 
The spirit of patriotism has also decayed among 
our people generally. Vain and boastful as we 
have been said to be, it is only in the United States 
of America that you can hear natives speaking con- 
temptuously of their country. Some causes for this 



11 

may be discerned. The immense extent of our 
country, our allegiance to which passes through our 
allegiance to our several States, whose rights must 
be watchfully guarded ; the consequent variety of 
products and circumstances, creating a supposed, 
but not real, opposition of interests ; the very great- 
ness and unprecedented progress of our prosperity, 
allowing no salutary lessons from grave adversity ; 
the licentiousness of party rancour, stimulated far 
more by the cupidity of profligate office-seekers 
than by any substantial difference of political 
doctrine; the inability of the less educated or 
less gifted to look over the vast field, and compre- 
hend the stretch of their personal responsibility ; 
the too general aversion of the good and wise to 
meddle with canvasses made purposely annoying 
by gross demagogues, who, Aristophanes tells us, 
are like the eel-fishers of the Copais, that do best in 
dirty waters * ; — all these have a tendency to cool 
down our ardor to a more latent heat ; but above all, 
the remoteness of other countries, which renders less 
noticeable the contrast of our unequalled privileges. 
We see the evils that exist among ourselves, and 
feel what Locke calls our "present uneasiness," 
while we admire what appears desirable abroad 
under the " enchantment " of distance. Besides, 
our Anglo-Saxon blood, though tempered by alter- 
nating extremes of heat and cold, retains its pro- 

* "Onep yap oi ras ey^eXeis 6r)pmp.evoi irinovBas. 
"Otclv p.ev f] Xlfivr/ KaracrTrj , \apf$avov<nv ovbiv • 
'Eav 8 avm re nai Kara tqv (iopfiopov kvkoxtiv, 
Aipova-L. innHS, 864-867. 



12 

pensity to quarrel and (pardon the rude English, 
— no other language supplies us with a synonyme) 
to grumble ; so, having none else to quarrel with, 
nothing else to grumble at, we vent our hereditary 
spleen upon ourselves and our government. In a 
word, we lack a proper degree of loyalty. 

Loyalty is the very term to describe the sentiment 
that cordially acknowledges the claims of our nation 
upon our love and service. It has indeed signified, 
almost exclusively, the fidelity of a subject to his 
prince ; nor, though, from our political habits, we 
cannot comprehend the feeling, can we help ad- 
miring the many instances of heroic valor, patient 
constancy, disregard of loss or suffering, and zeal 
through good or evil fortunes, which such attach- 
ment has prompted. Yet, though the principle has 
undoubtedly come down from those early times 
when the patriarch was the chief of his tribe, its 
more modern name is clearly derived from con- 
sidering the monarch as the head of the state, 
because the representative of the incorporating law. 
To uphold the authority of him who sat upon the 
throne, because it was necessary for the stability of 
government and the safety of the people, became 
a virtue as well as a policy ; yet, (such is our 
nature,) through the force of association, the per- 
son of the reigning prince grew to be so sacred, 
that it often attracted and absorbed the homage 
due him only in his official character ; and history 
tells us of men clinging desperately to the an- 
ointed fool who sported with their destinies, the 
priest-ridden bigot who persecuted their religion, 



13 

and the licentious tyrant who preyed upon their 
substance or wasted their lives. 

Loyalty, with us, is more agreeable to the ety- 
mology of the term. It is a reverent attachment to 
law emanating from the people according to the 
Constitution. Our magistrates, it is true, are, dur- 
ing their term of office, representatives of the law, 
and, as such, should receive our venerating obe- 
dience ; nay, very grave must be the provocation, 
before we 

" 'bate 
The place its honor for the holder's sake "; 

but our loyalty cannot be given to them, because 
they are the creatures of the popular will. Our 
only sovereign, under God, is the people acting 
legally ; and to them, while just in the exercise of 
their constitutional sovereignty, is due that fealty 
which political propriety, with the Word of God, 
commands from us to "the higher powers" of the 
land. Hence, the loyalty of an American citizen 
is of a more intellectual character, and, therefore, 
more difficult to be maintained. The person of a 
king is a visible, tangible object, and men can re- 
gard him as a man ; but our people are such an im- 
mense multitude, that it is not easy to regard them 
in their aggregate capacity, except as a theoretical 
idea; though, truly, the king is the figment, the 
people the substantial reality. The will of a mon- 
arch comes down upon his subjects from a height 
which long prescription has taught them to consider 
the source of law; the will of our people ascends 
through their ballots, and, when justified by the 



14 

national compact, becomes the law, which, by the 
same compact, we are bound loyally to obey. But 
in the formation of this law, each citizen, as a con- 
stituent part of the legislating people, has a share ; 
so that, as far as his vote has effect, he is his own 
sovereign and a law unto himself. The law is the 
result of the general suffrage, perhaps of long dis- 
cussion, angry dispute, and a small majority. The 
ballot-box, like a mighty crucible, fuses together 
the conflicting prejudices, sectional jealousies, an- 
tagonist opinions, and rival aims, which move the 
millions acting their several parts within the vast 
republic. It is, therefore, not easy to hush the 
passions which have stirred us during the exercise 
of our elective right ; to acknowledge with due 
submission the supremacy of the general over the 
individual will ; to own the rule of those who, 
though the majority, we believe are in the wrong ; 
to respect and love (ay, love, for without respect 
and love there is no loyalty) the people whose 
errors we see, whose faults we condemn, whose 
policy we dread. Still, such loyalty must be cher- 
ished, or our Union, now moving in harmony, like 
the heavenly orbs, by the nice balance of its cen- 
trifugal and centripetal forces, would soon become 
a chaos of fragments wild, jostling, and mutually 
destructive. 

Why should not such loyalty be cherished? 
Will not the issue of our ballot-box come nearer 
the right than the will of a crowned despot, or of 
an hereditary nobility, or of any privileged class? 
Has history shown the world so well governed by 



15 

the autocrat or the few, the happiness of the many 
so cared for by those who held themselves above 
and not of them; has political virtue so run in 
the line of legitimacy, or political wisdom so been 
the consequence of high birth, that, for some 
slight mistakes or even disastrous failures, we 
should abandon our popular system to adopt any 
other ? On the contrary, has not experience 
proved the safety and self-perpetuating energy of 
our institutions % When our national government 
was formed, how many scornful voices in the Old 
World confidently prophesied its speedy downfall, 
from the alleged want of elemental adhesiveness ! 
Yet, short as our history is, our system has sur- 
vived most of the European governments, and, as 
the signs of the times strongly indicate, may, at 
no very distant date, outlast them all ; except, 
perchance, our sister republics of the Swiss, which, 
now seven hundred years old, tower, like their Alps, 
above the prostrate or shaking thrones around them. 
How often, as this party or the other came upper- 
most, have the disappointed leaders rent their 
clothes, and, with ashes on their heads, howled 
dolefully over the land, that our ruin was nigh, 
that our commerce would be destroyed, our manu- 
factures crushed, or our agriculture impoverished! 
Yet, notwithstanding the mischievous vacillations 
of our economical policy, where, a few years since, 
there was one ship, there is now a fleet of merchant- 
men ; single manufactories have grown into pros- 
perous cities ; there is scarcely a farmer in the old 
States, who has not pulled down his house and 



16 

barns to build better and larger ; while, in the new, 
the virgin forests have gone down to let the sun- 
shine smile upon fields of plenty so rich and vast 
that their statistics almost stagger belief. We are 
but seventy-three years old, yet our States are 
thirty where there were thirteen ; nor can any one, 
who candidly compares the two periods, deny that 
we have grown more united as our millions have 
multiplied, and more consolidated as our territory 
has expanded, until our Constitution, like a noble 
arch, stronger by every fresh weight imposed upon 
it, now upholds in a prosperity unexampled an 
area equal to the continent of Europe. 

There are, doubtless, differences of opinion re- 
specting some of the steps by which these results 
have been attained; but it is only with things as 
they are, or promise to be, that our present reason- 
ing is concerned. In the year 1824, the Oration 
was pronounced before you by a gentleman then 
not unknown to fame as an accomplished scholar, 
but since eminently distinguished as the erudite 
statesman of whose eloquent power Massachusetts 
has been justly very proud, as the dignified repre- 
sentative of American culture while diplomatically 
representing the United States at the first court of 
Europe, and (not the least of his well-merited hon- 
ors) as the head of your great University. His dis- 
course then was fervid with patriotic hopes, and 
demonstratively prescient of our country's rapid ad- 
vancement ; but how must his generous heart rejoice 
to see that the accomplished reality has far tran- 
scended his warmest anticipations ! Indeed, the aim 



17 

of the address you are now hearing so patiently is 
humbly to follow out, through the accumulated facts 
of 1849, some of the thoughts with which he stirred 
our youthful ambition twenty-five years ago. 

That there are portentous evils existing among 
us, national crimes provoking the wrath of Heaven, 
practices widely inconsistent with the just theory 
of equality which we avow, and fearful perils to 
be met at no very distant day, it were folly to 
deny; but let us remember that everything hu- 
man is necessarily imperfect, that Heaven, while 
condemning sin, is mercifully patient with the in- 
firmities of the sinner, and that reform is ardu- 
ously slow, as vice is precipitant. Instead of de- 
sponding because all we desire has not been done, 
we should be highly encouraged by the achievement 
of so much. Certainly, no people ever made such 
growth in wealth, arts, general knowledge, and, 
considering all the circumstances, social virtues. 
The large scope given to expression of thought, 
and the multiplying opportunities of moral influ- 
ence, have already wrought most salutary changes 
of public sentiment on important subjects. The 
triumph of truth with the prevalence of right, 
though delayed, is certain, and, when gained, will 
be permanent. Let us, then, not heed the mur- 
murs of the self-conceited dogmatist because his 
opinion is not the pivot on which the nation 
swings ; of the sordid gain-seeker, who would turn 
the country's force to enhance the profits of his 
ship or his furnace, his cotton-plant or his spindle ; 
or of the fanatic nullifier, of Whatever latitude, who 
3 



18 

would sever his State or his section from such a 
league of powerful coadjutants, to dwindle in puny 
isolation. Thank God, the Samson is not, never 
will be, born, who can pull down our glorious edi- 
fice for the silly gratification of breaking his own 
pate ! One honest American woman's scissors are 
more than a match for all the strength such heads 
can wear. 

Our people deserve our trust. Far and wide as 
they have stretched themselves, they hold one polit- 
ical faith. The new States, allowing for the dif- 
ference of period and circumstances, are but repe- 
titions of the old thirteen. At this time of nearly 
universal uprising and struggles for reform else- 
where, we present to the world the unprecedented 
spectacle of unanimous satisfaction with the system 
of government established by our national fathers. 
Within the past and the coming years, there will 
have gone from among us, lured by the hope of 
golden rewards, to our new territory on the Pa- 
cific, numbers, principally of hardy, well-taught, de- 
termined young men, equalling the population of 
an entire State; an instance unparalleled through- 
out the history of emigration ; yet no one doubts 
that they will choose for themselves the same 
forms of government under which they have been 
educated, or that they will cordially maintain their 
allegiance to the Union. A citizen of the United 
States cannot imagine the possibility of living in 
happiness under any other system ; and now, when 
contemplating the efforts of distant nations, sprung 
from the same loins that we are, for the establish- 



19 

ment of constitutional freedom, we estimate their 
chances of permanent success by their approach in 
forms to our own, in spirit to ourselves. Nor have 
we been inconsistent with our professions ; for, 
whatever has been the decree of the ever-shifting 
majority, submission to law, and reliance upon the 
constitutional methods of correcting error, have 
steadily prevailed. At least, the exceptions have 
been too inconsiderable to impair the rule, and 
were speedily settled. Wonderful as was the rev- 
olution which made the colonies free, independent, 
confederate States, every national exercise of the 
elective right is, though on different grounds, 
worthy of equal admiration. We change our na- 
tional rulers, and, with them, our national policy ; 
yet, from one end of the country to the other, 
there is less riot than in England at the election 
of a member of Parliament. Nor can the most 
inveterate laudator temporis acti, who has read the 
newspapers published at the time of the earlier 
contests, deny that each general election is better 
conducted than were those before. 

We are emphatically one people. The constant 
and expanding flood of emigrants from less favor- 
ed lands gives in some sections a temporary, super- 
ficial diversity of customs, and even of language. 
Yet, as they come moved by an admiring wish to 
share our privileges, and a grateful respect for the 
nation which has made itself so prosperous, while 
it sets open its gates so hospitably wide, they 
readily adopt our usages, and soon become homo- 
geneous with the mass through which they are 



20 

distributed. Until they or their children are edu- 
cated in free citizenship, they follow ; but rarely, 
and then never successfully, attempt to lead. As 
the Anglo-Saxon tongue is the speech of the na- 
tion, so it is the Anglo-Saxon mind that rules. 
The sons of those who triumphed in the war of 
Independence have subdued the distant forest, 
making the wilderness to rejoice with the arts 
and virtues of their fathers. The patronymics 
borne by the most influential among them are 
most frequently such as are familiar and honor- 
able among us. Summon together the dwellers 
in any town of our older, particularly of our more 
northern, States, and you will find that there is 
scarcely a State of the Union where they have 
not relatives. The representative in Congress from 
the farthest West laughs over their school-boy 
frolics with the representative of the farthest East. 
The woodsman on the Aroostook talks of his 
brother on the Eio Grande; the tradesman in the 
seaport, of his son, a judge, in Missouri. The true- 
hearted girl, who has left her mountain birth-place 
to earn her modest paraphernalia amidst the pon- 
derous din of a factory near the Atlantic coast, 
dreams sweetly on her toil-blest pillow of him who, 
for her dear sake, is clearing a home in the wilds of 
Iowa, or sifting the sands of some Californian Pac- 
tolus. We all claim a common history, and, what- 
ever be our immediate parentage, are proud to 
own ourselves the grateful children of the mighty 
men who declared our country's independence, 
framed the bond of our Union, and bought with 



21 

their sacred blood the liberties we enjoy. Nor is 
it an insincere compliment to assert, that, go where 
you will, New England is represented by the 
shrewdest, the most enlightened, the most success- 
ful, and the most religious of our young popula- 
tion. Nearly all our teachers, with the authors of 
our school-books, and a very large proportion of our 
preachers, as well as of our editors, (the classes 
which have the greatest control over the growing 
character of our youth,) come from, or receive their 
education in, New England. Wherever the New 
Englander goes, he carries New England with him. 
New England is his boast, his standard of perfec- 
tion, and " So they do in New England ! " his con- 
fident answer to all objectors. Great as is our 
reverence for those venerable men, he rather 
wearies us with his inexhaustible eulogy on the 
Pilgrim Fathers, who, he seems to think, have 
begotten the whole United States. Nay, enlarging 
upon the somewhat complacent notion of his an- 
cestors, that God designed for them, " his chosen 
people," this Canaan of the aboriginal heathen, he 
looks upon the continent as his rightful heritage, 
and upon the rest of us as Hittites, Jebusites, or 
people of a like termination, whom he is commis- 
sioned to root out, acquiring our money, squatting 
on our wild lands, monopolizing our votes, and 
marrying our heiresses. Whence, or how justly, 
he derived his popular sobriquet, passes the guess 
of an antiquary ; but certain it is, that, if he meets 
with a David, the son of Jesse has often to take up 
the lament in a different sense from the original, — 



22 

" I am distressed for thee, my Brother Jonathan ! " 
Better still, his sisters, nieces, female cousins, 
flock on various honorable pretexts to visit him 
amidst his new possessions, where they own with 
no Sabine reluctance the constraining ardor of our 
unsophisticated chivalry; and happy is the house- 
hold over which a New England wife presides ! 
blessed the child whose cradle is rocked by the 
hand, whose slumber is hallowed by the prayers, 
of a New England mother ! The order of the 
Roman policy is reversed. He conquered, and then 
inhabited ; the New Englander inhabits, then gains 
the mastery, not by force of arms, but by mother- 
wit, steadiness, and thrift. That there should be, 
among us of the other races, a little occasional 
petulance, is not to be wondered at ; but it is only 
superficial. The New Englander goes forth not as 
a spy or an enemy, and the gifts which he carries 
excite gratitude, not fear. He soon becomes iden- 
tified with his neighbours, their interests are soon 
his, and the benefits of his enterprising cleverness 
swell the advantage of the community where he 
has planted himself, thus tending to produce a 
moral homogeneousness throughout the confeder- 
acy. Yet let it be remembered that this New 
England influence, diffusing itself, like noiseless 
but transforming leaven, through the recent and 
future States, while it makes them precious as 
allies, would also make them formidable as rivals, 
terrible as enemies. The New Englander loses 
little of his main characteristics by migration. He 
is as shrewd, though not necessarily as economical, 



23 

a calculator in the valley of the Mississippi, as his 
brethren in the East, and as brave as his fathers 
were at Lexington or Charlestown. It were the 
height of suicidal folly for the people of the mari- 
time States to attempt holding as subjects or trib- 
utaries, directly or indirectly, the people between 
the Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains ; but 
those who have not travelled among our prairie 
and forest settlements can have only a faint idea 
of the filial reverence, the deferential respect, the 
yearning love, with which they turn to the land 
where their fathers sleep, and to you who guard 
their sepulchres. The soul knows nothing of dis- 
tance ; and, in their twilight musings, they can 
scarcely tell which is dearer to their hearts, — the 
home of the kindred they have left behind them, 
or the home they have won for their offspring. Be 
it your anxious care, intelligent gentlemen of New 
England, that so strong a bond is never strained to 
rupture ! 

Variety of climate, of soil and position, must 
make variety in pursuits of life and habits of 
thought. The energy of our national character in 
various departments of productive skill (the rela- 
tions of which to each other are, as yet, not gen- 
erally well understood) must excite competition, 
perhaps some jealousy. Nor can all be expect- 
ed to think alike on many questions of national 
policy. On the other hand, Providence has so 
wisely distributed its blessings, that we may not 
choose but to be mutually dependent. The products 
of our immense inland territory must find vent 



24 

for the surplus through the ports of the sea- 
board, through which, again, must come the lux- 
uries or necessaries we require from abroad. The 
agricultural States offer the best markets for the 
manufactures of those whose soil is less fertile, 
yet dearer, and labor more abundant ; while these, 
in their turn, are rewarded with plenty of bread- 
stuffs and other provision. Iron, lead, coal, cop- 
per, gold, pass each other on their way to dis- 
tant localities. There are no empty return-wagons, 
rail-cars, or coasting vessels ; each carries back 
wealth purchased by the wealth which it brought. 
Our immense lakes, with their rich teeming bor- 
ders thousands of miles about, act like inner im- 
pelling arteries to the trade of the whole country. 
Our great navigable rivers, with their numerous 
tributaries, ramify, like veins, for the circulation of 
a common life through leagues none pretends to 
count, and millions whose increase none dares to 
guess. Nay, by the wonderful inventions of recent 
years, we are no longer dependent upon the watery 
ways of nature, and wellnigh annihilate distance. 
On the wings of steam, the population and wealth 
of whole towns may speed, swifter than a bird, 
along the roads which, binding us together by iron 
sinews, pierce mountains, span valleys, and measure 
the continuous level by minutes, not miles, so that 
we say, "How long]" instead of " How far]" The 
slender wires, now stretching like network over the 
land, quickly as living nerves, thrill thought and 
feeling between correspondents the most remote. 
And, by the admirable working of our confederate 



2b 

unity, is felt through all, like the beating of a cen- 
tral heart, the power of one national will. In a 
word, we realize more fully than Rome, with its 
Senate and Plebs, could do, the fable of old Mene- 
nius Agrippa, and are as virtually connected as the 
several parts of the human anatomy, — " that there 
may be no schism in the body, but that the mem- 
bers should have the same care one for another ; 
and whether one member suffer, all the members 
suffer with it, or one member be honored, all the 
members rejoice with it." 

Suppose, for one melancholy moment, that this 
healthful economy of exchanges were broken up, — 
that the Western valley were shut out from the sea 
by adverse governments, — that those on the coast 
were hemmed in to their own narrow limits by 
hostile forts along the mountain ridges, — that be- 
tween the North and the South there were neither 
commercial nor moral sympathy, —- that at every 
State line passports were demanded and a tariff 
set ; — who must not shrink from describing the 
terrible consequences ; the stagnation of trade ; the 
silence of brotherly counsel ■ the constant feuds ; the 
multiplication of armies ; the Cain-like, exterminating 
wars ; the overthrow of law by military dictators ; 
the utter ruin of all that makes us prosperous at 
home and respected abroad ; the sure catastrophe, 
moral and national death ! O that those, who, for 
any reason, talk lightly of dissolving this Union, 
would consider the immensely greater evils such a 
rupture would inevitably cause, the awful guilt it 
would bring upon themselves ! Whatever may be 
4 



26 

the cant of words, no lover of law could ever kindle 
the torch of such incendiarism, no lover of peace 
provoke such fratricidal slaughter, no lover of free- 
dom plot for such general slavery, no lover of God 
and man undermine the eminent watch-tower whose 
light is now shedding over the world such bright 
promise of a universal brotherhood. Were it pos- 
sible that an American womb could be so cursed as 
to bring forth so diabolical a monster, and the 
malignant Erostratus could be successful, a loud, 
bitter, heaven-compelling cry would go up from all 
the earth, swelled by generation after generation, 
until the final fires shall have swept to hell all 
trace of human crimes : " Anathema ! Anathema ! 
Anathema Maranatha ! " 

We ought, it is true, to have little fear of our 
being overtaken by so terrible a calamity; but our 
courage can rationally be derived, under God, only 
from a warranted confidence in our people, that they 
will have sense enough, probity enough, religion 
enough, to pursue the conduct upon which the per- 
manence of our welfare depends. For these rea- 
sons, this feeble but earnest voice calls upon you, 
gentlemen, and, so far as it can reach, upon literary 
men throughout the country, to exert, by the many 
legitimate means at hand, the vast influence Prov- 
idence has intrusted us with, for the cultivation of a 
high, generous, unsectional patriotism ; a patriotism 
whose rule can be best given in the immortal words 
of one who, more than once, has upborne on his 
Atlantic shoulders, safe through perils, the sphere of 
the Constitution : " Our country, our whole coun- 
try, and our country as one ! " 



27 

God has not given us talents, and permitted us to 
cultivate them, that they may be terminated upon 
ourselves. Fascinating as the charms of study are, 
and delightful the calm, secluded hours in which 
we hold converse with the philosopher, the poet, 
the orator, and the historian, made immortal by 
their pages ; and unwilling as we may be to tear 
ourselves away from pleasures so exquisite, for any 
living society or engagements of the outer world, 
neither the law of our Creator, nor the urgencies 
of the times, permit such luxurious self-indulgence. 
Thought, truthful, clear, and argumentative of good 
deeds, is an oracle from heaven ; eloquence, whether 
of the voice or of the pen, comes from a divine 
afflatus ; and woe, woe, in this world and in the 
next, to that man whom God has thus ordained 
his prophet, if he utters not, or if he perverts, 
the revelation ! Study, when not directed to use- 
ful ends, becomes a vice; and superior knowledge 
makes us more guilty than our fellow-men, if we 
offer them no share in our acquisitions. Yes ! far 
more worthy of thanks from man, and of reward 
from God, is the digger of the ditch that drains 
the marsh, the hewer of the wood that warms a 
dwelling, the veriest menial that serves our ne- 
cessities, than the scholar who refuses his enlarged 
powers to the benefit of his race, — who distin- 
guishes with more than Hermaic subtilty between 
" the Me " and the " not Me," yet neglects the ac- 
tual morals around him, — who would sing solitarily 
his own pumice-worn numbers, self-charmed by their 
Attic purity, though the city were burning, — who, 



28 

intent over his problem, cares not that an enemy 
has forced the gates, — or who exhausts upon the 
particles of a dead language an energy which 
might save immortal souls ! 

Your candor, gentlemen, will interpret these 
remarks, not as disrespectful to learning, (which 
would be sacrilege on an occasion like this,) but 
as hortatory to its proper use, and as dissuasive 
from a selfishness more refined, yet scarcely less 
guilty, than the hoarding of a miser. Error is nev- 
er idle, never uncommunicative, but, like its malig- 
nant father, goes pestilently about to corrupt human 
happiness. Ignorance is never idle, but rushes on 
from blind impulse, often the more mischievous 
when honest, because superstition, prejudice, or 
fanaticism, inspires it with the strength of con- 
science. Mind will be active, the moral being will 
be busy ; and if they who have the skill direct not 
its force to good, it will be working evil. It is the 
plan of God, " the Father of lights," — Pater ipse 
colendi, — that men shall be regenerated and sanc- 
tified by truth, — truth communicated through the 
instrumentality of men whom he calls to work with 
himself, — truth, the proper, sole medium of his om- 
nipotent rule over the freedom of his rational crea- 
tures. We are, therefore, verily faithless to God and 
dishonest towards men, if we bury his gift, which, 
through a zealous usury, might make many rich, 
or hide the light which he has kindled in our souls 
for the scattering of darkness around us. Yes ! the 
miser who hoards gold is despicable, yet he with- 
draws only a temporary convenience ; the speculator. 



29 

who stores away bread in time of famine, makes 
gain of mortal suffering ; the skilful physician, 
who, from cowardice or love of ease, attempts not 
the rescue of his neighbours sick of a plague, is 
negatively a murderer; but he who knows truth 
and the method of imparting it, yet keeps it back, 
secretes the riches of eternity, the food of immortal 
spirits, the sure, only remedy of all human woe. 

The lessons of the abstract, when apprehended 
aright, tend steadily to the practical. Our re- 
searches as scholars are in the past, but our busi- 
ness is in the present and the future. And what 
an unprecedented field does our present and future 
open to the philanthropic exertions of intellectual 
men ! Human nature is ever radically the same. 
That as yet anonymous science which concerns the 
knowledge of human nature has few fundamental 
axioms. Solomon wrote proverbs for all ages. The 
characters of Tacitus transmigrate through all gen- 
erations. But the developments, the combinations 
and phases of human action, in these times, are 
unexampled. The labyrinth has become so com- 
plicated, that our hand cannot securely grasp the 
ball of the clew. Zeno himself could not keep cool 
amidst such universal, multiform, constant excite- 
ment. Once, a few thought, and still fewer led; 
now, all think, and none are willing to follow. 
Mountains, seas, diversities of language, hereditary 
enmities of races, scarcely retard the revolution- 
ary contagion. Armies receive the command to 
" charge ! " — they obey ; but first come " right about 
face," and rout with their bayonets Vetat major. 



30 

Bulls, whose roar once shook terribly the earth 
like one wide Bashan, now wail plaintively and 
feebly as a famishing calf outside the gate of 
its paddock. The pawns toss kings and queens, 
knights, bishops, and rookish nobles from the 
board, to play out the game among themselves. 
Constitutions are woven in a night, and are swept 
away like cobwebs by the morning broom. Rul- 
ers and ministries treat oaths as lightly as do smug- 
glers in a custom-house. The giant, MAN", long 
crushed by usurpers of divine right, is flinging off 
the iEtna from his mangled breast. His limbs are 
not yet drawn from under the quaking, groaning, 
fire-spouting mass ; but he is sure to rise. He will 
reel blindly, at first, from inveterate weakness of 
limb, his head dizzy with his new uprightness ; his 
enemies will hurl on him their frightened ven- 
geance; he will stagger, stumble, fall; but, gain- 
ing strength each time he presses the bosom of his 
mother earth, he will gather himself up, drive op- 
posing powers irrevocably back to more than Egyp- 
tian darkness, and stride triumphantly forwards un- 
til he reaches the goal which the good God has 
promised him, - — consummate freedom, happiness 
undefiled, imperishable dignity in the Divine image. 
The truth of a liberated Gospel will dissipate his 
errors, as Minerva did the mists from the eyes of 
Diomed, and the noble prophecy of the .Tusculan 
be fulfilled : " Perfecta mens, id est absoluta ratio, 
quod est idem virtus." 

Such is the agitated, hopeful world, and such 
the crisis of its changes in which we are called to 



31 

labor ; but our immediate sphere is our own coun- 
try, the sphere where our zeal will tell most effec- 
tively on the destinies of mankind. The example 
of our national character, developed by our liberal 
institutions, has, more than all other causes com- 
bined, waked up the spirit of the Old World. The 
radiance of our well-adjusted freedom is melting 
away the icy fetters that have, from time imme- 
morial, frozen to moral numbness the larger por- 
tion of Continental Europe. The name of America 
sounds like that of heaven on earth to the volun- 
tary exiles who leave their fatherlands in the con- 
fidence of finding, for themselves and their children, 
a better country, fulness of bread, and the rights of 
their own sweat. The eyes of their kindred follow 
them to our shores. The news of our advancement, 
our state papers, the issues of our unshackled press, 
go back, despite of the keenest surveillance, with 
their endorsement to their native hamlets. Political 
philosophers and ardent philanthropists come west- 
ward, that they may study our recent but vigorous 
systems, as the Greek once went to the older land 
of the Nile. A strong word, distinctly spoken here, 
echoes through hut and palace, cabinet and camp, 
of distant but anxious listeners. O, then, let us 
work now, that we may work for the stupendous 
future ; let us work for our country, that we may 
benefit the world ! 

There are those who will turn away in disgust, 
sallow and smoke-dried as a mediaeval legend, from 
these exhortations to the present and future, as 
from the ravings of an upsetting radical ; — men, so 



32 



oppugnant in their mental temper, that they can 
never think out of an antithesis to common sense, 
counting it glory when they deny the obvious and 
advocate the exploded, — or who, shuddering, with- 
out faith in the Presiding Spirit, at the friction, 
the order-working friction, of conflicting opinions, 
imagine that chaos is come again, and grasp, like 
drowning swimmers, at any floating fragment of pre- 
cedent or authority. There is a fashion (for fashion 
dresses the inside as well as the outside of the head) 
of tergiversant sentimentality, a sombre affectation, 
which looks back admiringly and regretfully upon 
the middle centuries, as Lot's wife would have 
looked upon the Dead Sea, had she survived till 
the next morning ; whining " like a sick girl " over 
the sturdy plainness, the prosaic directness, the un- 
poetical utilitarianism, of our modern republican 
ways; sighing for the priestly pomps, the bril- 
liant chivalry, the royal stateliness of feudal times, 
when portly abbots locked up the rare Bible, but 
doled fragments of the monkish feasts to the rag- 
ged, kneeling, cruci-signing rabble of pilgrims at 
the refectory gate ; or the letterless vassal tilled the 
soil for his lord's profit, fought in his lord's quarrel, 
and held his life by his lord's caprice. Shocked 
at the crowding of the vulgar many into the very 
penetralia of knowledge and social amenities, these 
resurrectionists of mortified deformity shudder at 
the scream of a locomotive as though it were a 
fiery dragon, while there is no Saint George to meet 
its fury ; the hum of machinery threatens them with 
a moral earthquake ; and a primary school they re- 



33 

gard as a nursery of precocious conspirators against 
prescribed faith and stagnant order. The evil spares 
nothing it can reach. The delicious, dreamy seat, 
to whose undulating excellence Boston had the hon- 
or of giving invention and a name, is thrust aside 
for a high, straight-backed chair of torture, after an 
Elizabethan pattern of old-maidish prudery ; nor can 
we approach our nightly resting-place without dan- 
ger of being knocked on the head by some Gothic 
hobgoblin. Our fairest books and their delicate 
etchings are overlaid by facsimiles of illuminated 
parchments, on whose pages a clumsy-fingered cen- 
obite has plastered rickety angels and epileptic 
martyrs, in patches of coarse gold-leaf, staring azure, 
and red lead.* Nay, you may see our own poets 
set forth with such barbaric embellishment, in 
which they figure as appropriately as Piers Plough- 
man would in gaiter-boots, or Juliana Berners in a 
Jenny-Lind. Head-men of parishes are ridden by 
architectural nightmare, until the white, airy, clap- 
boarded meeting-house, where their fathers wor- 
shipped God in the simple Man of Nazareth, gives 
place to a low-eaved, steep-roofed, cold, damp, rough- 
stone barn, in which the preacher's voice is lost 
among the groined rafters, and his people cannot 
see to read his text by the dim light that comes 
through painted, lanceolated windows, streaming a 
distorted rainbow over the congregation, making 
the wife wonder why her husband looks so blue, 



* Minium, red oxide of lead, was much used in the embellishment of 
manuscripts. Hence miniatores, and, as some think, illumination . 

5 



34 

while the good man fears she is seized with jaun- 
dice and the children with scarlet fever; yet, after 
all, the grotesque pigmy no more resembles the 
grand picturesque of England's old churches, than 
a graveyard obelisk Cleopatra's Needle. 

Far be it from us to speak disrespectfully of 
the few minds which shone in the twilight of Eu- 
rope, looming larger through the fog, yet herald- 
ing the dawn. No true-hearted student is with- 
out a strong antiquarian sense of the interest at- 
tached to the beginning of art, letters, and civil- 
ization; neither can one, who has visited the min- 
sters and cathedrals of Britain by day, or Melrose 
and Glastonbury by moonlight, ever forget his ad- 
miration of the creative genius which combined 
more than Cyclopean strength with more than Co- 
rinthian luxuriance ; but we must protest against 
this sacrificing of convenience for an imitation of 
the antique, this making venerable of all that is 
old, this condemnation of the useful as the un- 
spiritual. To an elevated, healthy imagination, 
there is more poetry in a nicely constructed steam- 
engine, working with its Titan sinews and Bria- 
rean hands, yet breathing softly as a sleeping child, 
than in all the knightly tournaments and sacer- 
dotal shows that our ancestors ever wondered at ; 
all the troubadours of Provence had not a tithe 
of the romance that a clear, sesthetical eye can see 
hanging round a village of factory-girls, every one 
of whom is a living story of love, hope, constancy, 
and courage; a modern linen-weaver's label often 
presents as fine specimens of Arabesque as can be 



35 

found in a virtuoso's cabinet; nay, if richness of 
design, grace of drawing, and harmonious contrasts 
of color be criteria of good taste, we may point to 
a Sunday group of servant-maids, in the fresh pride 
of their Lowell printed calicoes, and say, — " Solo- 
mon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of 
these ! " 

Be it our aim, gentlemen, as it is our privilege, 
to learn all that the past can teach us by its suc- 
cesses and its failures, to take out of it only what 
is good, beautiful, true, and right. It were the folly 
of dotage to do more. As for the rest, " Let the 
dead bury their dead," but let us " go and preach 
the Gospel," light for the ignorant, justice for the 
laborer, freedom for the slave, " peace on earth 
and good-will towards men." Antiquity! "What 
is antiquity % Is the world growing younger % 
Had our fathers more experience than we, who 
have their experience added to our own'? "We 
are the ancients," said the great leader of modern 
science. The present is the better antiquity ; the 
future will be the best. 

It were presumption to set forth before you the 
methods in which we, as literary men, may serve 
our country. Our responsibilities are in accord- 
ance with our faculties and our opportunities. 
There are various degrees of mental force, some 
forms of talent are better adapted to have power 
over men than others, and equal chances for exer- 
cising zeal are not given; but every literary man, 
because he can reach many, is, by calling, a public 
servant, and bound to act upon a larger theatre 



36 

than the less gifted individual, who can reach only 
a few. Whatever tends to promote true religion 
and the happiness necessarily connected with sound 
morals, to improve the arts of life, to refine the 
general taste, to enlarge the public mind, to throw 
elevating or endearing associations around our 
country, is a patriotic service. The preacher of 
Christ in his pulpit, the teacher of youth in his 
school, the man of science in his experimental 
lucubrations, the historian in his researches, the 
artist in his studio, the poet in the melodies of his 
lute or lyre, every man who employs his educated 
powers, should act from patriotic motive; not 
the patriotism of a section, but of our whole 
country ; which, unless this argument has been 
sadly erroneous, is eminently consistent with duty 
to God and devotion to our race. The stern Dor- 
drechtian theology of your orator (which, he is well 
aware, has but little favor here, even among the 
straitest sects of the Orthodox) will not allow him 
to speak of disinterested benevolence ; for, as he 
believes, the Divine system recognizes no such vir- 
tue. The harmony of a soul, which Aristotle con- 
siders its moral perfection, lies in an accurate 
adjustment of self and love. Self is an authorized 
motive, but only when hand in hand with love. 
The delight accompanying intellectual exertion 
and desire of fame, both of which every literary 
man feels so keenly, becomes a noble enthusiasm 
when we make the aim of our scholar's life the 
benefit and illustration of our native land. True 
as the oft-repeated maxim may be, — 

" Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori," — 



37 

it is not less sweet and honorable to live and labor 
for its lasting interests. The most perilous warfare 
is that in which only fearless reason can win vic- 
tory for the right ; and there are knots in the 
cords binding man's soul, which can be cut by no 
sword, however keen, but must be untied by strong, 
persevering logic. Neither warrior nor statesman 
adorns his birth-place with more imperishable glory 
than the author who achieves immortal usefulness. 
In a single night were written both verse and 
melody of that Marseilles Hymn, which, like a 
whirlwind, has swept down successive tyrannies, 
and will be chanted as a spell of liberating might, 
until the brave shall no longer need to arm at the 
call of freedom. Shame upon our men of genius, 
that our people have as yet neither national song 
nor air worthy of the name ! The poet who will 
indite for us such a song, the composer who will 
give us such an air, may be sure of a fame to 
which that of Pindar is poor. Where on earth is 
there a river, except the old Mle, the yellow Tiber, 
or the sacred Jordan, to which a pilgrim turns 
with higher emotion than the " Silver Avon " ? 
Virgil, when, amidst the splendors of the Augus- 
tan city, he recalled, as the Shepherd Tityrus, his 
early haunts, sang smilingly, — 

" Urbem, quam dicunt Romam, Melibcee, putavi 
Stultus ego huic nostrae similem" ; — 

but when the author of the iEneid came to die, 
the first words he dictated for his funeral urn 
were a legacy of his fame to his native village, — 

"Mantua me genuit." 



38 

The waves of the iEgean, as they dash against its 
vine-surmounted cliffs, echo the name of him who 
from his misty throne looks down without a peer 
in epic grandeur, — 

" The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle." 

A curious traveller may find on the innermost 
curve of the Gulf of Contessa the wretched village 
of Stauros. There once stood the strong, magnifi- 
cent city of a mighty people, who, with mortal 
courage, contending against perfidious Athens, per- 
ished amidst its ruins. All the names of those 
martyrs for liberty with whose blood the Strymon 
ran red are passed from the memory of man, and 
their grand examples lost in the obscurity of un- 
recorded time; but a mention of The Stagirite 
comes upon our souls like a charm of power, as 
the name of him who, through more than two 
decades of centuries, since he died an exile on the 
shore of the Euripus, has swayed the widest em- 
pire over human thought ever granted to an unin- 
spired mind. Gentlemen, be it yours to glorify 
with similar, if not equal, trophies the land of 
your birth ! 

Under those governments which fetter the press 
and allow the people no just share in deciding 
their own fortunes, where words of right are no 
sooner heard than the fearless voice that uttered 
them is hushed by death or the dungeon door, 
there may be excuse for educated men who give 
themselves up wholly to mere abstract studies or 
pursuits strictly scholastical. The guilt of their 



39 

silence is on their oppressors. Here, not only is 
there perfect freedom in expressing opinion, but, 
in speaking to the people, we address the govern- 
ing will. Of that governing will we are ourselves 
a part, and therefore we are bound by our share 
in the government to contribute all we can for 
its direction and prosperity. Our simple votes are 
not enough ; the most ignorant boor, the vilest 
ragamuffin of our cities, can cast his vote as well 
as we. It is our duty, because it is within our 
power, to enlighten others who vote with us. The 
principles of our government are few, and firmly, 
logically settled by the Constitution, in so plain a 
manner as scarcely to leave room for an honest 
doubt ; yet its nature is so unexampled, that it 
must continue to be, as it has been, eminently one 
of experiment. The questions that will arise will 
be such as should receive the intelligent considera- 
tion of every citizen ; but, at the same time, they 
will be chiefly questions of political ethics and 
political economy. If the moral integrity and 
substantial wealth of the country be cared for, 
there remains little, if anything, else to demand 
our attention. Both these subjects come fairly 
within the reach of the studious man. It may even 
be said, that he only is capable of investigating 
them candidly and of treating them thoroughly. 
In those countries where rule is usurped by the 
few, the privileged classes repress the knowledge 
of the rest; in ours, where the people have the 
power, and, through our diffused education, more 
or less a habit of reasoning, the effort of designing 



40 

self-seekers is to mislead by specious sophistry, 
garbled facts, or distorted statistics. Every present, 
accidental, temporary uneasiness, every sectional 
interest, every prejudice attached to the sound of 
words, (and they are as manifold as they are mis- 
chievous,) is eagerly seized upon to create a popu- 
lar excitement for the furtherance of narrow or 
unnational views. The charm of party is thrown 
round selfish ends. The priests of the idol taboo 
every subject, a misrepresentation of which can 
help them to ofhce, that none others may open it 
and expose their iniquity. It is our duty, as edu- 
cated men, trained in the calmness of study, ac- 
quainted with the certainties of knowledge, to 
disabuse our people of the false and edify them 
on the true. We are, or should be, elevated by the 
advantages we profess above many of the difficulties 
and temptations which hinder common minds in 
searches after truth. Prejudice of every kind, like 
the mists of the lowlands, should lie far beneath 
us ; for it is our privilege, if we deserve our name, 
to breathe a clear, rarefied atmosphere, where no 
exhalations of earth come between us and the sun- 
light. From these heights we have a wide circuit 
of vision. The past opens to us its experience, 
the great present is spread out before us, and, so 
far as they can be inferred from the comparison of 
the past with the present, we discern the contin- 
gencies of the future. If it be impossible not to 
feel the influences of sect, party, or vicinage, let us 
not be in bondage to either. Christianity is more 
than sect, patriotism more than party, our country 



41 

than the section where we live. It is our vocation 
to make known truth, and, while bad men, or nar- 
row-minded men, or ignorant men, reasoning falsely 
from isolated facts, would distract or mislead the 
people, to show them that human legislation should 
be ever in accordance with the fixed, fundamental 
laws of God; that the best welfare of the whole 
is the best welfare of each ; our best policy, an 
unwavering vindication of the general right ; our 
best freedom, fidelity to God, each other, and man- 
kind. Motives of personal gain should in us be 
overborne by a liberal love of the beautiful, the 
proper, and the good. Such demonstration of sound 
political doctrine is most urgently needed. It is 
high time that the discussion of themes so vital- 
ly important should be no longer abandoned to 
mere traders for votes, who now superciliously de- 
nounce the moralist and the student as intermed- 
dlers, if they speak of things concerning the public 
weal ; it is high time that questions of social 
right and national economy should be treated on 
better grounds than the pecuniary profits of classes 
who insist upon contending as rivals when they 
should be coadjutors ; it is high time that the 
people should hear voices of warning or encour- 
agement from those who ask nothing and aim at 
nothing but the general good. Never will justice 
be done to inquiries which most affect our na- 
tional advantage, until the name of politician be 
taken from the office-seeker, and given to the 
Christian philosopher, who, from the fear of God 
and for the sake of man, studies and " speaks the 
6 



42 

truth in love," " out of good conscience," and " with 
the meekness of wisdom." 

Let us not be driven from a duty so sacred and 
so honorable by the sneering assertion, that such 
matters can be rightly handled only by what are 
called " practical men," and that bookish theorists 
are out of place in the busy world. Practice'? 
Theory 1 When was there ever right practice but 
where theory had gone before 1 What guides the 
merchant's ship, drives the manufacturer's engine, 
enriches the farmer's ground, flashes instant news 
across and throughout a continent, but theory'? 
Mark, we say theory, not hypothesis ; for the pert 
bunglers always confound those terms. Hypothesis 
is a guess; but theory is hypothesis proved by in- 
duction from facts. What were your practical men 
without theorists % Precisely what the hands, feet, 
and other working parts of the human system would 
be without the brain. Are we less capable of distin- 
guishing fact from falsity because our eyes are not 
sanded by gold, our ears stuffed with cotton, or 
our consciences hypothecated in bonds payable six 
months hence 1 Because some screaming geese 
once saved the Capitol, shall intellect be drummed 
off guard % Justice, candor, gratitude, forbid an 
insinuation of the least disrespect for the admirable 
virtues, public spirit, mental ability, and munificent 
appreciation of knowledge, which dignify many of 
those who are truly practical men, — of whom there 
are nowhere finer examples than among your own 
neighbours. They would repudiate the attempts 
of their weaker brethren to cut them off from an 



43 

alliance with investigating mind. The most hum- 
ble laborer in the workshop or the field has a 
title to our thankful esteem that shall never be 
denied. But we would fain lash, till they howled, 
the vapid dunces who think that there can be no 
practical judgment beyond what they have learned 
from a petty practice, or an acquaintance with the 
price-current and stock-list, yet not unfrequently 
aspire to be theorists themselves, parading their 
puny sciolism on stilts of preposterous English 
and worse logic. 

Such exhibitions are rather ridiculous than mel- 
ancholy; but sadness mingles with indignation 
when we see genius or strong reason selling itself, 
for the price of bread or pleasure, to do the drudg- 
ery of scheming avarice. 

" In lacherlichem Zuge 
Erblickt man Ochs und Fliigelpferd am Pfluge." 

In this respect our politics have been a very 
Tartarus of talent, where we discover one ever 
rolling arduously a sugar-hogshead; another sweat- 
ing in a furnace ; another lashed to extravagant 
eccentricities of ethics and logic by a vindictive ne- 
gro, whom he will carry chained on his back as a 
proof of eminent republicanism ; another whirling, 
like Ixion, with the constant revolutions of a fac- 
tory driving-wheel. 

Such are the momentous changes now rapidly 
succeeding each other, that a faithful scholar, at a 
crisis perhaps not apparent to himself, may, by a 
few well-digested thoughts, couched in a few well- 



44 

directed sentences, save his country from impend- 
ing ruin. History has not a finer instance of the 
power which eloquence may exert over popular 
fury, than that of a year since, when a single 
modulated voice stayed the most sanguinary mob 
the world has ever known, — stayed them for long 
hours, when bent ravingly on destruction, and then 
turned them back with the tricolor waving where 
the red flag had glared. He, who won that tri- 
umph of such incalculable value, was not a prac- 
tical man, and has since, unfortunately, proved 
himself not a successful statesman : yet, with all 
his subsequent failures, honor, honor to Lamar- 
tine, the literary man, the orator ! Honor to 
the Codes, who, single-handed, kept the bridge 
against the impetuous hordes of murderous incen- 
diaries ! For that one act of devotion, he deserves, 
like his prototype, bread while he lives, and a 
statue on the spot where he dies. God keep our 
country from such a day of peril ! But, should 
our voice or our pen be needed, and we delay our 
duty beyond the juncture of apt circumstances, our 
most strenuous endeavours may be met by the 
fatal response, which sealed the fate of a splendid 
dynasty, " Cest trop tard ! " 

The popular mind of this country is well pre- 
pared and not ill-disposed to acknowledge our 
frank zeal on their behalf; though, at the same 
time, what are opportunities for good are also op- 
portunities for evil. A general conviction, that each 
participant of the democratic sovereignty should 
be fitted as far as possible for the exercise of his 



45 

elective power, has made the education of the 
young a care of every State government ; not al- 
ways as wisely or thoroughly as might be wished, 
yet, where the difficulties of recent settlement have 
been passed through, or the incubus of slavery does 
not w T eigh down the nominally free, it is eminently 
the popular policy. In no other country are there 
so many readers, or readers who read so much. 
In no other country does the press labor more to 
supply the demand for newspapers, periodicals, and 
books. The cheapness of publication naturally in- 
creases the demand, which, again, lowers the price 
of the supply. There are always caterpillars on 
the " tree of knowledge," which itself bears a 
double fruit, " of good and evil." It is not, there- 
fore, to be wondered at, that the land has been 
overrun by trashy and dangerously immoral writ- 
ings; but the good is out-working the evil. Our 
principal publishing-houses have found, by profit- 
able experiments, that the market for the most 
substantial books has grown in a far greater ratio 
than the population ; and that large editions of 
works on the most useful branches of general 
science or literature have been rapidly sold, which, 
a few years since, would have lain like lumber in 
their garrets. The treasures of old English have 
been ransacked to meet in compendious forms the 
appetite of a healthy taste. Writers of the first 
class have arisen from among ourselves, and some 
foremost of the foremost from your own ranks, 
gentlemen, to compete successfully with those of 
the Old "World's former centuries ; while others, of 



46 

less, though, not despicable, character, especially in 
the belles-lettres, are springing up like butter- 
cups in a meadow. Prejudice against reading an 
American book, never so great as disappointed 
scribblers supposed, has given place to an over- 
weening partiality for home productions, not only 
in literature, but in art. Not content with boast- 
ing of our truly great names, of which any land 
or age might be proud, we resent it as wrong done 
America, when superlative laudation is denied any 
pretty pen that traces a pleasing story or a string 
of creditable verses ; we discover Ciceros plenty as 
the stumps which serve our orators for rostra ; and 
we execrate by Apollo all unable to detect a future 
Angelo in every untaught youth who chips a head 
out of stone, or dashes a crude conception on can- 
vas. There is no country where reputation for 
talent or scholarship is so easily won, or mental 
labor, except of the highest kind, is better paid. 

No doubt this has in a measure repressed the 
ambition of some, who, conscious of high powers, 
are unwilling to be jostled on so crowded an arena. 
When extreme epithets of praise are lavished upon 
hasty, ephemeral trifles, there remain no terms 
worthily to designate the productions of deep, long 
thought. The Virgilian patience, which spends a 
day upon an hexameter, will not endure being evened 
with the fatal facility which improvises a hundred 
lines stans pede in uno. The Olympian eloquence, 
which labored for twenty years on a eulogy of 
democratic Athens, would have but little chance 
against the torrent hyperbole of a Western Pericles, 



47 

who lords it over his shouting constituents by an 
inspiration caught from the buffalo-hunt, the flow 
of the Mississippi, the crash of the forest before 
the axe, or the solitude of the ocean-wide prairie, 
yet which as seldom fails to hit the centre of hu- 
man enthusiasm, as his rifle-ball the heart of a flying 
deer. Nor is it surprising that a devotee to one 
particular branch of science, more than sufficient 
of itself for ten lives, should sometimes shrink from 
the omnigenous competition which is equally ready 
at inventing a cooking-stove or an ethical system, 
and will take to the pulpit, the bar, a professor's 
chair, a seat in the Senate, or the Presidency of the 
United States, if only sure that the emoluments of 
the new speculation will exceed those of a quack- 
medicine, a peddling-wagon, or a singing-school. 
But such readiness to honor intellectual effort 
proves a liberal, upward tendency of our people, 
who, though they may now applaud excessively 
the less worthy, will sooner or later appreciate the 
more deserving; and such restless versatility of 
talent shows an energy of mental enterprise, which, 
if the rich soil be cultivated aright, promises no 
scanty harvest. 

Besides, there is an unmistakable and increasing 
disposition to philosophical methods of thought 
and action. The cry is for ideas, and, though 
often affected, the fashion is to demand principles, 
and at least a show of demonstration. Our people 
claim for themselves, and would transmit to their 
children, the right of private judgment ; and the 
faculty, nurtured by political habits, is exercised 



48 

on all subjects brought before them. It is as 
natural for an American to reason as to breathe ; 
and his favorite method (no doubt, from shrewd 
New England example) is the Socratic. He will 
believe nothing, do nothing, submit to nothing, 
without knowing, or thinking that he knows, 
why. He is much fonder of the lecture-room than 
of the spectacle. He will listen to any one on 
any subject, provided the lecturer offers proof; 
but his questions Why ? and How % readily silence 
the most plausible declaimer. From these and 
other causes, there is throughout our country 
(though, for obvious reasons, greater in some sec- 
tions than others) an activity and sensitiveness of 
mind unexampled and increasing. The advocate 
of truth can desire no opportunity more magnifi- 
cent. 

One thought more. With the history of this 
country, God began a revolution in his treatment 
and development of human nature. Up to that 
moment, the great divisions, even the larger subdi- 
visions, of our race had been kept apart from 
each other, separated and made distinct by climate, 
by language, by hereditary habits. The eastern 
and southern quarters of the globe we leave for 
the present out of our calculation, as their time 
of revival is yet far in the future, and speak of 
Europe. Even Christianity has failed to accom- 
plish a coalescence. The mysteries of Osiris still 
linger around the altars of Magna GrEecia. The 
Druids have left in the customs of Britain monu- 
ments lasting as Stonehenge. Tacitus may serve 



49 

the modern traveller as an Itinerary throughout 
what was Germania Antiqua. The fetters of na- 
tional prejudice have eaten into the bone, and the 
quick flesh is grown over them. Each nation has 
married only with its own blood, and the evils 
of the incest are upon their offspring. Each has 
kept its own characteristic vices and virtues apart 
from those of the others ; yet it is a law of Provi- 
dence, that distinct vices act as checks upon their 
rival passions, while virtue is stimulated by virtue. 
The Italian is only an Italian, the Frank a Frank, 
the Spaniard a Spaniard ; and so each of the rest 
is now wellnigh as distinct as when Caesar wrote 
his Commentaries. Some changes have been 
wrought by Religion and the Press, but neither 
Religion nor the Press has had its fair influ- 
ence; the one has been distorted, the other mana- 
cled, both abused by national law and national 
sentiment. The higher orders of society, who 
travel and read, may assimilate from a common 
creed of etiquette ; but the people, the plebeians, 
remain distinct and the same. The men, and even 
the women, (varium et mutabile fcemina^) of separate 
cantons, departments, duchies, or shires, have in- 
herited fashions of dress from their grandfathers 
and grandmothers, great, great, great beyond arith- 
metic. The war of races and tribes is now deluging 
Europe with blood. The enmity among them there 
seems ineradicable. 

But what has God done, what is He doing, what 
is He about to do, in this land % He has set it 
far away to the west, and made it so circumstan- 
7 



50 

tially independent, that, if all the rest of the habit- 
able earth were sunk, we should feel no serious 
curtailment of our comforts. The products of the 
whole world are, or may soon be, found within 
our confederate limits. He brought here first the 
sternest, most religious, most determined represent- 
atives of Europe's best blood, best faith, best intel- 
lect ; men, ay, and women (it is the mother makes 
the child), who, because they feared God, feared 
no created power, — who, bowing before His abso- 
lute sovereignty, would kneel to no lord spiritual 
or temporal on earth, — and who, believing the Bible 
true, demanded its sanction for all law. To your 
Pilgrim Fathers the highest place may well be 
accorded ; but forget not, that, about the time of 
their landing on the Rock, there came to the 
mouth of the Hudson men of kindred faith and 
descent, — men equally loving freedom, — men from 
the sea-washed cradle of modern constitutional 
freedom, whose union of free burgher-cities taught 
us the lesson of confederate independent sovereign- 
ties, whose sires were as free, long centuries before 
Magna Charta, as the English are now, and from 
whose line of republican princes Britain received 
the boon of religious toleration, a privilege the 
States-General had recognized as a primary article 
of their government when first established ; men 
of that stock, which, when offered their choice of 
favors from a grateful monarch, asked a Univer- 
sity * ; men whose martyr-sires had baptized their 

* After the eventful issue of the siege of Leyden,the Prince of Orange 
and the States-General, grateful to the heroic defenders of that city, of- 



51 

land with their blood ; men who had flooded it 
with ocean-waves rather than yield it to a bigot- 
tyrant; men, whose virtues were sober as prose, 
but sublime as poetry; — the men of Holland ! Min- 
gled with these, and still farther on, were heroic 
Huguenots, their fortunes broken, but their spirit 
unbending to prelate or prelate-ridden king. There 
were others (and a dash of cavalier blood told well 
in battle-field and council) ; — but those were the 
spirits whom God made the moral substratum of 
our national character. Here, like Israel in the 
wilderness, and thousands of miles off from the 
land of bondage, they were educated for their high 
calling, until, in the fulness of times, our confede- 
racy with its Constitution was founded. Already 
there had been a salutary mixture of blood, but 
not enough to impair the Anglo-Saxon ascendency. 
The nation grew morally strong from its original ele- 
ments. The great work was delayed only by a just 
preparation. Now God is bringing hither the most 
vigorous scions from all the European stocks, to 
" make of them all one new man " ; not the Saxon, 
not the German, not the Gaul, not the Helvetian, 
but the American. Here they will unite as one 
brotherhood, will have one law, will share one in- 
terest. Spread over the vast region from the 
frigid to the torrid, from Eastern to Western ocean, 



fered them their choice of an Annual Fair or a University. They chose 
the University ; but, struck with the nobleness of the choice, the high 
authorities granted them both. The University was established in 1575, 
and became the Alma Mater of Grotius, Scaliger, Boerhaave, and many 
other renowned men. 



52 

every variety of climate giving them choice of pur- 
suit and modification of temperament, the ballot-box 
fusing together all rivalries, they shall have one 
national will. What is wanting in one race will 
be supplied by the characteristic energies of the 
others ; and what is excessive in either, checked by 
the counter-action of the rest. Nay, though for a 
time the newly come may retain their foreign ver- 
nacular, our tongue, so rich in ennobling literature, 
will be the tongue of the nation, the language of its 
laws, and the accent of its majesty. Eternal God ! 
who seest the end with the beginning, thou alone 
canst tell the ultimate grandeur of this people ! 

Such, gentlemen, is the sphere, present and fu- 
ture, in which God calls us to work for Him, for 
our country, and for mankind. The language in 
which we utter truth will be spoken on this con- 
tinent, a century hence, by thirty times more mil- 
lions than those dwelling on the island of its 
origin. The openings for trade on the Pacific 
coast, and the railroad across the Isthmus, will 
bring the commerce of the world under the control 
of our race. The empire of our language will fol- 
low that of our commerce ; the empire of our in- 
stitutions, that of our language. The man who 
writes successfully for America will yet speak to 
all the world. 



P D i. 



6 6. 















r0' 



>> * 8 ' n * \? «*» * ° " ° ^° 







LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



019 371 543 6 



PPKMBWB 



XCCOOOCtltOwft 






OTTO 



HUB 



SsSSkSz 



XQgQCC 




